Is Preferential Treatment of Female Offenders a Thing of the Past? A Multisite Study of Gender, Race, and Imprisonment

Abstract

Dramatic increases in the number of women incarcerated in state and federal prisons have led some researchers to conclude that differential sentencing of female offenders is a thing of the past. This study uses data on offenders convicted of felonies in Chicago, Miami, and Kansas City to address this issue. The authors find no evidence to support this “gender neutrality” hypothesis. In all three jurisdictions, women face significantly lower odds of incarceration than do men. The results also reveal that the effect of race is conditioned by gender but the effect of gender, with only one exception, is not conditioned by race; harsher treatment of racial minorities is confined to men but more lenient treatment of women is found for both racial minorities and Whites.

An Examination of the Interactions of Race and Gender on Sentencing Decisions Using a Trichotomous Dependent Variable

“…Furthermore, women are more likely to sustain community ties (e.g., family) and are viewed as less likely to reoffend than men are (Daly, 1994). White male defendants also are viewed as less criminally involved and less likely than Black males to recidivate (Bridges & Steen, 1998;Spohn & Beichner, 2000). These perceptions likely result in women and in White men being considered as better candidates for probation.…”

“…Incorporating Albonetti's (1991) findings that a lack of information available to judges often results in them making decisions based on stereotypes and past experiences, Steffensmeier et al (1998) asserted that judges sometimes develop a "conceptual shorthand" where they use limited information (e.g., offense seriousness, gender, race) to draw conclusions about the three focal concerns. This theory has been widely used to explain racial and gender disparities in sentencing (e.g., Spohn & Beichner, 2000;Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006;Steffensmeier et al, 1993;Steffensmeier et al, 1998). This perspective explains why Black male defendants were found to receive the harshest treatment, as those of minority and male status elicit the strongest perceptions of blame and dangerousness.…”

“…Brennan (2006) found that race indirectly affected women's sentences through such variables as offense severity, prior record, community ties, and social-economic status, with Black and Hispanic women being more likely than White women to receive jail sentence. Conversely, a body of research exists that has found the opposite and has indicated that Black women actually receive the most preferential treatment (Bickle & Peterson, 1991;Spohn & Beichner, 2000;Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006). Spohn and Beichner found that both Black women and White women were significantly less likely to receive a sentence of incarceration than both Black men and White men in Kansas City and Chicago.…”

“…A great deal of research has been conducted to determine whether gender disparities exist in sentencing decisions (for reviews of the literature, see Daly & Bordt, 1995;Spohn & Beichner, 2000;Steffensmeier, Kramer, & Streifel, 1993). The majority of these studies have found that gender disparity does exist in the decision to incarcerate a defendant in either prison or jail (often referred to as the in/out decision).…”

Racial profiling : using propensity score matching to examine focal concerns theory.

“…This is because Blacks and Hispanics are viewed as being more dangerous while Whites are viewed as less likely to recidivate (Steffensmeier, 1980). Other sentencing studies found similar results (Demuth & Steffensmeier, 2004;Johnson, Ulmer, & Kramer, 2008;Spohn & Beichner, 2000;Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2001.…”